Various features described herein relate generally to a tightly-integrated parallel printing architecture and more specifically to print job plan optimization.
As printing machines and related components become more complex, a need arises for systems and methods that facilitate processing numerous commands and ever-more-copious amounts of information. On the other hand, as processor speed increases and memory capacity grows, print platforms become increasingly complex in order to fully exploit the processing power of modern computing systems. The trends of increasing processing power to meet system demands and then increasing system functionality to maximize utilization of available processing power combine to cause a marked increase in the complexity of printing systems.
Conventional planning algorithms attempt to generate a planned ordering or sequence of events for processing a print job received at a printer. When multiple printing options are involved in a print job, careful routing of a sequence of pages to be printed through a printer can become crucial. For instance, print job planning can facilitate conserving resources such as toner and paper while improving throughput of a printing platform.
In model-based planning, especially for online planning for manufacturing systems such as printers, the speed of the planner is critical. A conventional online planner constructs plans from scratch incrementally when a new job request is received. This allows for the exploration of all possibilities and finds good quality and even optimal plans. However, this approach can lead to a lengthy planning time when the system is complex. Accordingly, a need exists for systems and/or methods that facilitate quickly locating a job plan for executing a received job, as well as performing additional search for an optimal-quality plan, within predefined time bound.